Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [88]
As you build your network and start gaining more followers on Twitter, it becomes a very useful tool for informal conversational research. If you ask a really good question and send it into the world with a #hashtag to make the answers easier to find, you can even do research with a very small following, because the tag attracts curious bystanders who may later become new followers. As you ask questions, you can use any number of polling tools or even a simple manually generated tracking system (such as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet) to collect the answers and data that you receive.
Twitter can be thought of as a global, human-powered, mobile phone-enabled sensing and signaling network. What Twitter knows about the world is pretty incredible, and once businesses understand how to work with that information, it can contribute toward closing some pretty important gaps in our economy between supply and demand.
Growing your numbers naturally
Although effective questions and good tagging can help your research spread beyond your direct network, in order to do most kinds of research on Twitter, you need a healthy following first. This network will have much more value in the long run if you grow your numbers through natural conversational methods and organic back-and-forth follows. (Tip: Don’t advertise “please follow this account” the way that Ashton Kutcher did when he was trying to race CNN to a million Twitter followers.) When you know that you have a diverse crowd of intelligent people following you on Twitter, including those who are both fans and critics of your brand, then you can feel relatively comfortable starting to ask them for feedback and insight.
Take it slow and wait for a solid, engaged, relevant network to build up instead. But your business and you can begin to thrive on the real-time feedback about your products, services, and staff. Twitter can, among other things, help you find out before it’s too late that a new flagship product is flawed, spread the word about your excellent customer service directly from the customers that were involved, and invite interested customers to come to real-life tweetups to find out more about your brand. Any forward-thinking business that has transparency on the mind or wants to remain on top of brand perception at all times has started to use Twitter.
Going Transparent
Transparency is a crucial marketing buzzword for some businesses and a scary reality for others. Lest you think we’re asking you to live out that unpleasant dream where you forget to wear your pants to school, relax. Transparency doesn’t require exposing company data to corporate spies or baring your soul for the Internet. More than anything else, it simply means being honest, disclosing your biases, admitting to mistakes, and not trying to force your message and spin on everyone all the time.
Although many Twitter users find themselves becoming more casual in their use of the service over time, you need to find your own personal comfort level between acting like a real person and over-sharing. After you find that line for yourself, your business, and your employees, being genuine and transparent on Twitter becomes second nature. Transparency fosters trust and relationships. It’s no secret — people like to work with people they like.
Here’s how to achieve transparency:
Release control. Stop worrying about what might happen to your brand. Instead, listen to what your customers are trying to tell you and respond to that feedback. The truth is, you haven’t been able to control your message for a while now: You might just not have known it. For example, look at the hashtags #motrinmoms and #amazonfail. In the former example, painkiller brand Motrin put out an online ad campaign that targeted mothers; it failed spectacularly when real moms took offense at its content. They used Twitter to express their anger and ultimately get the campaign suspended.